Good Morning Blues: Gordon Parks Imagines Leadbelly

Abstract

Gordon Parks’ 1976 film Leadbelly opens with a scene that embodies what Michel de Certeau terms “transverse tactics,” a notion that people gain and demonstrate agency when they “manipulate the spaces in which they are constrained.”1 The film’s opening sequence, outlined above, frames the film as a narrative about frustrated heroism, akin to the story of John Henry and his hammer. Almost certainly, the sequence refers to a 1945 documentary footage of Leadbelly edited by Pete Seeger, in which Leadbelly plays guitar in front of a red velvet curtain. A few bars into the song, Leadbelly adds a chopping gesture that Parks then reinscribes into the film as the rise and fall of Leadbelly’s pickax. In its entirety, this film captures the raw energy of rebellion, the refusal to submit to authority within the oppressive boundaries of Jim Crow, and the importance of human creativity in sustaining a sense of dignity and agency through that struggle.